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My husband and I recently went to our granddaughter’s softball tournament, and got to witness some appalling behavior on the behalf of the opposing teams’ coaches. Both coaches, from both teams.

One coach got up into the umpire’s face because of a call. This normally doesn’t happen and is certainly not permitted, and it caused a 30 minute delay in game. A mediator had to be brought in, and the ump’s original call stood. Then the opposing team’s coach caused a fit over a requested rain delay, which was not granted. To me, it felt like bullying, and it destroyed the spirit of the game.

I understand that winning is nice, but winning at all costs worth it? I thought their behavior was inexcusable. And how do parents and grandparents manage this? I have a 12-year-old granddaughter, and I don’t want this to be her main impression of what to expect from team sports.

–Fair-play Grandmom

~~~The Bartender and The Priestess respond~~~

P: Wow, I’m so sorry. For you, for the kids, for all of us.

I’m not sure when children’s local sports slipped from something kids do to the most important thing in the world. Sure, there have always been notably irate parents but they were fewer and farther between, if only because social strictures were stronger.

Disclaimer, I don’t do sportsing and neither does my beloved Bartender. We do things for our health, and we may watch them on tv, but game sports are not my field of expertise.

B: Critics of team sports—while generally looking at manly sports like football and hockey and such—point out that they are, in quite a few startling parallels, much like organized warfare. There are distinct sides, identifying uniforms. Sports involve strategy, Us v. Them, and can even—especially at the end of a tournament—end in militaresque victory parades. If you don’t believe me, watch the Olympics and tell me that’s not a way for countries to deploy against one another in a socially acceptable manner.

I mean, hey. We’re still basking in the glow of the 1980 US Olympic hockey team’s surprising defeat of the USSR’s Central Red Army team. If that wasn’t a thinly-veiled war game, I don’t know what was.

I don’t oppose organized sports. I even love some of them. But it’s easy to see how they can knock a participant over the edge and straight into fanaticism. “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing,” isn’t that right? That’s been floating around in our public consciousness since it was first uttered in 1950. (Fun fact: NOT said by Vince Lombardi but rather, by UCLA football coach Red Saunders. Take that, misattributed quote promoters!)

P: So, to start with: in my opinion, sports are a great way for kids to figure out the way their bodies work, to learn to follow directions, to learn to strategize and to learn to collaborate in achieving their goals. And it’s probably not a bad thing to learn a bit about friendly rivalry. As when you start to do anything, especially if you’re going to be good at anything, you’re spending a lot of time being gloriously bad at things. When you have to learn so many things at once, there are so many ways to be bad.

Still it’s a thrill to play and a thrill to get better. Look, arms and legs all headed in the same direction YAY. Look, ball successfully arrived at another kid, WOW!

Now something we learn in this process is that not all of us have what it takes to take our particular sports world by storm. Young dreams aside, few of us are going to be the best athlete in the world in our sport. Yep, actually a really small percentage. A modest number will grow up and become really competent. So that leaves a lot of other kids to learn about running and team work and cheering people on.

B: You’re right in worrying that “winning at all costs” is problematic, since learning how to lose graciously is part of becoming a fully functioning adult. It’s, sadly, something the battle-coaches you talk about failed to teach their charges when they had the opportunity. The world doesn’t always conform with the outcome you want, and kids need to learn that that is OK. Losing a tournament shouldn’t result in tantrums. It shouldn’t end in personal recriminations. It doesn’t make a child less of a person if they don’t win a softball tournament. It doesn’t diminish their ability to draw or do math or play piano or bake. It just means they didn’t win a softball tournament. Life will go on.

P: The likelihood is that your child is not the next Derek Jeter or Serena Williams, and their work on the field isn’t the most important thing they’ll do in their life. Although the time and interest and fun you invest in them may well be the most important thing you do in your life. It may be the most important thing you give them. Not only is there love, but there is also hanging out with friends, doing something together. There is, we devoutly hope, a sense of your parents, siblings, grandparents being proud of you and all around glad you exist.

B: The one bit of relief I find in this letter is that the writer doesn’t implicate parents in being the sports-crazed bad seeds. Honestly, since the perpetrators of bad behavior were opposing team coaches, it makes me wonder (reading DEEPLY between the lines) if there isn’t a personal issue between the two of them.

Now, they may have learned how to coach from watching too many film clips of coaches kicking dust on an ump’s shoes, and you may have had the misfortune of getting two people with severe anger management issues. And any reason for petulant behavior like that is inexcusable. But you may have—let’s face it, mostly likely have—been witnessing the expression of issues that have nothing to do with the game at hand. Maybe the coaches were romantic rivals. Maybe they’re former lovers. Maybe it was a perfect storm of bad juju, and Coach A just had a fight with his/her significant other while Coach B was fighting a vicious toothache. Or maybe they’re narcissistic win-hounds who will wear sackcloth and ashes if they lose a game. Bad blood will out. The kids, and the game, bore the brunt. Regardless, shame on them for engaging in an “I am the squeakiest wheel!” method of coaching.

You’re out of order! You’re all out of order!

P: Let’s talk about their lack of courtesy. Oh, what a disaster. Lots of towns are adopting courtesy codes. They should be urging them on the sports organizations. Sports organizations should be examining their mission statements. They should have pledges anyone, any adult, involved in the sport should sign. And there should be penalties. Although the importance of winning is certainly emphasized over playing, just about everywhere in life, isn’t it? So maybe it won’t matter to a parent if she/he is banned from ever watching their child play again as long as, by hook or by crook, they win a t-ball game. Are we ready to give this up and be neighbors, friends and oh, by the way, parents? Because this is immature, self-indulgent and distasteful.

B: I want to eliminate the word “bully” from this discussion. I appreciate your awareness of the problems that come from bullying and thank you for being vigilant in opposing it and its negative effects. But all bad, mean-spirited behavior isn’t bullying, and I don’t want to water down the meaning of that word. The coaches in question weren’t aggressors going after a target they perceived to be weaker; they were peers battling for supremacy. Pissing contests are not bullying events.

P: Bullying may be too easy a catchword. The Bartender and I just indulged in a sidebar argument. We reached no permanent agreement other than on the fact that it’s stinko behavior. She thinks the way the stinko behavior gets expressed is a personal issue, I think it’s a permission issue… I think it’s a threatening temper tantrum without regard to who’s involved… with regard only to whether we win, win, win. It’s a ridiculous use of power and privilege. I wish the only people doing this were just these two tantrum tossers. I wish it weren’t soccer moms and dads (and football and base/softball and wrestling and all) (and sometimes grandparents — good for you for calling this out!)

B: US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously wrote that the remedy for negative speech is “…more speech, not enforced silence”. You (and her parents) need to talk to your granddaughter, get her to explore how she felt about it, guide her to understand that sometimes, adults act irrationally and none of that behavior was acceptable or should have been perpetuated at her and her team’s and her opposing team’s expense. It should not have been endured, nor should it be emulated.

Then model the behavior you do want her to emulate. Gather together for a family game of softball. Have a pepper game in the back yard. Get some board games, play Risk. But undertake these actions with the idea that you will all participate in these games for fun, and for bonding purposes, with all ego left at the door.

P: Parents? And grandparents? You have a couple responsibilities. You need to get the kid to team practice and to games and to spend some fun time kicking, throwing, batting, something-ing around the ball in the back yard with your kid. It can be great bonding time. It can be a fun memory that your kid can look back on and say, “wow, my mom/dad always had time for me.” (That can happen even if you’re really bad at the sportsing thing. Just keep the glove in front of your face or the mask/helmet on!) You need to recognize that a game is just a game and that your kid may just be a kid who needs to have fun, and that this is helping your kid become confident and competent. Maybe your kid is a freaking genius; acting like this, you can hopefully help her/him develop teamwork, camaraderie, and self-discipine in the process of sorting out his/her arms and legs and developing brain — Because of course discipline matters immensely in developing genius.

And if your kid is not a freaking genius, you can still offer to play catch. Or go and cheer. Or float down a river on some inner-tubes and relax…

What the doctor ordered. (Note: not a real doctor. But I would play one on TV, casting directors.)

Many thanks to Deb Slade for her Phabulous Photos!

Many thanks to the lovely Jean for modeling and playing along!

Many thanks to the good people of the Lewisburg Hotel for letting us use their facility!

My boyfriend, “Bob”, and I, are in a committed relationship. We’ve been together for the past nine months, living together for six. Yes, we moved fast. For the most part we are super-compatible. We’re good at dividing household chores and bills, we are supportive of one another, and our sex life is great. I can picture us spending the rest of our lives together.

However. Bob has a sexual bucket list, and at the top of that list is having a threesome. He almost nags me about it, because it mentions having a threesome every week, more than once a week. He’ll even make a point of showing me which of my friends and co-workers he’d like to invite in as the third person at the party. Bob says he can only picture having a threesome before we get married, because having one after we’re legal would be “weird”. Before we get married, after we get married, the fact is I’m not really comfortable with having a threesome, and I don’t expect that to change. What do I do? Should I give in and have one with him, because it seems like it’s so important? Do I let him find two other girls to have one with, even though I know I won’t be OK with it?

See the thing about coupleness, as I see it, is that sexual bucket lists become a couple’s sexual bucket list. And a bucket list is sorta wow, that might have been really interesting to do, but damn, life interfered.

Presumably no one in Mr. Threesome’s life has ever thought it was their job to satisfy this fantasy… which is to say, so far he’s failed, but he thought maybe you could pimp his dream for him? Nice guy.

B: I want to echo Ann and emphasize that as far as couples go, a “sexual bucket list” is one that should be mutually shared by the couple. It’s not that all sexual exploration has to stop once you commit to another person. It’s that the exploration should meet both partners needs OR, at the very least, doesn’t jangle one partner’s “Ick” reflex. When that happens, the other partner needs to be willing to let that “Ick” thing fall off the table. So if you were interested in having a threesome, by all means, you should, as a couple, go for it. But you’re not.

Because the thing about sex, despite the idea that clothes can be thrown off with reckless abandon and it’s just skin, is that you are, at that time, vulnerable. You are, literally, naked. You are—especially as a woman—literally opening yourself up to someone else. You are as physically close as two people can be. If you’re not going into the bedroom joyfully (or at the very least, with open-hearted acceptance), then you shouldn’t go.

P: And actually, this is really the first thing, which makes all the other discussions sort of moot? You’re not interested. No means no. Anything else is coercion. Coercion/Persuasion to do something you don’t want to do doesn’t really fall in the partnership model, it falls in the sexual assault or maybe just harassment model.

B: Yeah, Ann, I agree. I’m more than a little alarmed by Bob’s war of attrition. Mentioning his desire to have a threesome, repeatedly, and pointing out desired partners…do you find the ground getting a little uneven beneath your feet? Does it knock you off balance a little? It should, because trying to wear you down that way is manipulative and unsettling. He’s hoping you’ll finally snap; All right! Enough already! Let’s go bang Susie from accounting!

P: For real? WORK??? He’d like you to waltz into your work place, where presumably you have a career that’s important to you, and not to him, btw or he wouldn’t be asking you to screw it up, and solicit someone for sex? Someone, who would then have all sorts of private information to hold over you. This looks like a great idea if you’re working on a program how to derail your career in a couple easy steps. There are reasons we don’t have sex at work. Almost all of them are valid.

The cards say: don’t bring your co-workers into your personal kink.

B: Absolutely. Repeat after me, dearest: BOUNDARIES, please! I’m concerned about Bob’s willingness to point out his desired partners from your pool of friends and co-workers. Work is not the place to look for kink playmates. That’s what Craig’s List is for. Are you supposed to view everyone in your life as a possible sex partner? Or more than that, as a sexual threat? Are you supposed to feel jealous or possessive or “maybe this is the one?” every time you’re around another attractive woman? That doesn’t lead to sexual autonomy or healthy decision-making. That’s a constant stressor, and will find its way out in overreactions, or a poor work environment. Stress will out. If you did agree to a threesome, insist that he stop pointing out which members of your social circle he’d like to sleep with and engage in finding third partner as a couple, and insist that it’s someone who’s independent from the rest of your lives.

P: Yes, it was early to move in, and that’s a problem because you need to know someone a while to know whether or not he’s going to start lobbying for you to do something you really don’t want to do “for him.” Because what’s going to happen when you say no, I’m not interested?

What will happen when you say, no, in fact, I’m not interested in a man who puts his fantasy above his real relationship?

B: I’m not sure if you’re actually engaged, or if you’re projecting into your future engagement. Regardless, you speak as though you’re looking at a lifetime together. Here’s the thing: if you’re going to function within the parameters of a committed relationship, then you need to behave as though you’re in a committed relationship. That means respectfully attending to your partner’s feelings, and reaching a mutual consensus. That does not mean filling your own desires by the grinding emotional erosion of attrition. Bob says a post-marriage threesome would be “weird”. But you’re committed to one another right now, right? This is supposed to be the testing ground before marriage. This isn’t supposed to be, “You are my one and only, baby and I know a threesome isn’t your thing, but…what about her?” Question that “but”. What if “but” never happens? Will there be resentment? Will there be cheating? Will there be more coercion, even if it’s “weird”? You need to find out just how important this is to Bob. Or, on the flip side, if you do agree to a threesome, you need to ask yourself if you’ll feel OK, or resentful, or betrayed. Depending on your perspective, a threesome can be an opportunity for you both to explore a sexual avenue, safely, together. Or, you can feel like you agreed to let your boyfriend sleep with someone else while you had to watch. (Would he be OK with if your threesome was with another man?) Or, since you already said you don’t think you would feel OK if he went forward with a threesome without you, you can feel like you undermined your own set of principles by letting him do what he wanted.

P: Oh, and this… those people who are really anxious to be part of a threesome, it does double their sexcapades and partners. I’d be wanting some good info on a person I was going to do a bunch a things to that I didn’t want to do… cause probably boyfriend wants to watch… because there’s nothing hotter than two chicks who so aren’t into each other pretending to get off for a guy…

What if he likes it and wants to do it again? Do you say no then? ‘cause now you’ve done something you had no interest in doing with someone you work with who now knows everything about you and you have to leave your apartment AND your job.

B: You know, I see people all the time, at the bar, drowning out the aftermath of bad decision-making. Ask yourself how your relationship with Bob is, overall. Yes, you said you’re both good with chores and responsibilities and have a good sex life, and those are all important, but does he make you feel respected? Cherished? Secure? Free to be who you are? And the same goes for him. Perhaps he’s just a different person with a different set of values. The question is whether or not you can make your values mesh. If the answer to that is no, I’d recommend taking some time to strongly consider whether or not he’s the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. It can be hard to extract yourself from a relationship, and we often put up with more than we want because the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. And it’s hard to accept that you can love someone but not be able to make things “work”. Adding one more person into your bed won’t ease this sort of contemplation.

P: Feeling beleaguered or harried or resentful or compromised or unfulfilled is no way to start a life together. This question bothers you enough to write in about it. Is this, potentially, a deal-breaker? If it is, then let it be your dealbreaker, and make peace with it. It’s your body, and it should be your decision how to use it.

B: If you feel that engaging in your boyfriend’s bucket list threesome would empower you in some way, then go for it. But if you feel like this would be damaging or compromising, then stand behind your beliefs. If he can’t accept your sexual boundaries as part of the marriage package, then maybe it’s time to take a different path.

Sex Rx?

Thanks to Deb Slade for Phabulous Photos!

Thanks to Dale and the good people of theLewisburg Hotelfor the swanky location!